The Dark Continent

I have been thinking about my education a lot lately. While I feel my pre-college education was excellent in most aspects, there is one area in particular that I feel was left out.

Africa

This “dark continent” was almost entirely left out from my elementary education. By the time I got to junior high, I had learned in school that Africa was a continent. I knew that black people lived there. I had heard the terms starving children, AIDS and third-world but I didn’t really understand what those meant. I thought that Africans were not civilized and lived in huts. I had learned a little bit about ancient Egypt and The Lion King taught me what types of animals lived there.

Through junior high I didn’t receive much more information. In 9th grade geography I learned the names of all of the countries in Africa.

High school was different. I was a member of the debate team and as we debated UN Peacekeeping Operations I learned about Rwanda and about the genocide in the Darfur. I had learned about the Holocaust at least eight times in my education, but I had never learned about the genocide in Rwanda that occurred when I was in elementary school. Additionally, I had no idea there was an ongoing genocide in Sudan.

It was through my own personal research that I learned about these tragedies.

My senior year, my English teacher required that we read Cry, The Beloved Country. This novel by Alan Paton was about poverty and crime and South Africa. The novel really opened my eyes to a situation I had never really heard about. I knew who Nelson Mandella was, I knew what the word apartheid meant, but I really had no concept of what happened there.

I think it is deplorable that my education essentially left Africa out. I studied World War II nearly every year beginning in 5th grade. I read Anne Frank’s Diary several times for various classes. I can tell you all about Auschwitz, Nazis, and D-Day. But it wasn’t until this year that I could really tell you about the estimated 800,000 Tutsi people who were slaughtered in just three months in Rwanda.

That’s not to say that I don’t think we should study the Holocaust. I think it is one of the most important events in 20th century history. However, I do think we need to teach it with a purpose. We said we would never again allow genocide after the Holocaust, but we continue to see genocide and acts of genocide in places like the Darfur.

My big question is why? Why do we leave Africa in the “dark”? One of my goals is to help increase education about Africa. I truly believe that if people learned about Africa from early ages and if we talked about it on the same level we talk about other world conflicts, then maybe we would see change. We study the past and often think “I wish I could help” or “If I was there, I would have helped”. Well there is a lot to be done now; there is still a lot of conflict in the world.

We shouldn’t have to wait for a celebrity to wear a t-shirt before we hear about a crisis in Africa.